Muslim appeasement and Islamist terror become buzzwords as the BJP taps into anti-Trinamool Congress sentiment in West Bengal.

In February this year, an Intelligence Bureau note to the home ministry claimed that Bangladeshi terrorist groups, which had been driven out from that country, were taking refuge in West Bengal and several Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders were sheltering them. When the note went unnoticed ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, CPI(M) Central Committee member and former West Bengal minister Gautam Deb launched a scathing attack through the media, alleging that TMC Rajya Sabha member Ahmed Hassan Imran was a frontman for the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Earlier in 2012, a state intelligence report alleged that Imran had been involved in incidents of communal violence, although that did not stop Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from nominating him to the Rajya Sabha.

So it did not come as a complete surprise when the TMC's alleged terror links resurfaced after a bomb blast in the house of its leader Nurul Hasan Choudhury in Khagragarh, Burdwan district, on October 2 killed two suspected JMB terrorists. But the difference this time is that with the BJP in power at the Centre and its state unit resurgent after an impressive performance in the Lok Sabha polls, Banerjee and her party are finding it increasingly difficult to counter such allegations. And coming on the back of criticism that Banerjee is going out of her way to appease Muslims with a series of welfare measures, West Bengal is beginning to witness political polarisation long religious lines, observers say.

Banerjee got a taste of this polarisation in September when Shamik Bhattacharya won the bypoll from Bashirhat and became the first BJP leader to enter the state Assembly in 15 years. BJP's emergence as an alternative in the interiors of West Bengal is attributed to Banerjee's special focus on welfare measures for Muslims, the alleged "reign of terror and corruption" of TMC workers as well as to the BJP forming a government in Delhi.

Muslims comprise nearly 30 per cent of the state's population and the TMC's landslide assembly election victory in 2011 is pinned on a huge swing in the Muslim vote as several Muslim clerics had publicly endorsed Banerjee. After coming to power, she announced a monthly allowance of Rs 2,500 for imams or the clergy, and followed it up with a monthly payment of Rs 1,500 for muezzins. The Calcutta High Court, however, declared such allowances, which would have cost the state about Rs 84 crore a year, as unconstitutional.

"People in West Bengal never voted along religious lines. It was Mamata Banerjee who introduced divisive politics by aggressively wooing Muslims. But people are now seeing through her game plan and even Muslims are deserting her," says Bhattacharya. State BJP President Rahul Sinha claims that scores of Muslims in rural Bengal are joining the BJP as they have realised that Banerjee's doles to them are just aimed at securing their votes.

The story of Nargis Sultana, 20, a postgraduate student of Bangla literature from Bashirhat's Banshajhari village on the Bangladesh border, is a rare but glaring example of the changing social and political dynamic of rural West Bengal. Sultana says she stopped supporting Banerjee because "she was all promises and no delivery and tried to use Muslims just as a vote bank". "What's the point of giving money to imams? Mamata assumes that imams will influence poor Muslims to vote for her. What has she done for us except handing out meagre monetary doles, that too just on paper?" asks the student who is also pursuing a law degree.

Sultana voted for TMC in 2011 but joined the BJP six months ago. She is now the general secretary of the party's minority wing. She hopes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take effective steps to stop infiltration from Bangladesh.

Udayan Bandyopadhyay, a professor of political science at Bangabasi College, Kolkata, however, does not believe that there has been a sudden rise in Muslim support for the BJP. "It would not be correct to say minority votes are moving away from the TMC. There are instances where Muslims have gone into the BJP fold to put up political resistance against the ruling formation. It is a question of their survival instinct," he says.

Yet, the growing polarisation along party lines is taking on violent contours. Three weeks after the Burdwan blast, on October 27, three persons were killed in Makhra village in Birbhum district in a clash between TMC and BJP supporters. A police officer was also injured as a crude bomb was hurled at him. From a primary healthcare centre, 16 buckets of bomb materials were recovered. Villagers and the police, however, maintain that the bombs have no connection to the Burdwan incident; bombs are just a part of West Bengal's violent political culture.

While the BJP plans to make the influx from Bangladesh a major poll issue, Banerjee maintains a studied silence on the subject, a tactic that her detractors allege is aimed at winning more Muslim votes. For Banerjee, this is a major shift in stand: in 2005, she hurled a sheaf of papers at the Lok Sabha speaker's chair, protesting against not being allowed to raise the subject of "illegal Bangladeshi migration".

On November 3, Banerjee instructed her party workers to go door-to-door to counter the "malicious campaign" against the TMC. She also ordered the publication of a booklet explaining the party's position on its alleged links to the Saradha chit fund scam as well as to terrorist groups. "Mamata Banerjee has let us down. There has been a silent demographic change in West Bengal thanks to the continuous influx. But our chief minister is busy pleasing a vote bank created by foreigners. I hope that Prime Minister Modi will keep his promise of driving out the infiltrators," says Rahul Banerjee, a student at Visva Bharati University, Shanti Niketan.

Facing the heat, Banerjee is now focusing on keeping her house united. In an interesting volte face at the November 3 meeting, she expressed her solidarity with former TMC national secretary and key poll manager Mukul Roy and her unofficial number two, Madan Mitra. The names of the two veterans had cropped up in investigations into the Saradha scam, so they were sidelined by her, partly also because of the rising influence of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee in the party, observers say.

Banerjee's critics say that she led a long battle against the Left Front rule and sought to bring in Poriborton or change in West Bengal. But since she came to power, the only change people have seen is in the colour from red to green. "The TMC government has failed to prepare a development road map focusing on education reforms, a cogent industrial policy and the agricultural sector. The government has to come out of minor controversies and emphasise bigger aspects now," says Bandyopadhyay.

This apart, Banerjee now has another battle at hand: to prevent a saffron onslaught in West Bengal.